Twelve participants from the Middle East and North Africa participated as part of the USSEC team, attending the 2019 Western Dairy Management Conference from February 23 to March 2. The participants included major dairy farmers and feed millers in the MENA region.
Dr. David R. Gast, director of nutrition & technical services at Ag Processing, Inc. escorted the team during their visit.
He recapped, “A USSEC MENA dairy team consisting of dairy persons from Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia attended the Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. The three day educational conference offered numerous presentations, presented by industry and academic experts, on a wide range of topics such as feed quality and evaluation, feeding management, reproductive performance, dealing with heat stress, feed additives, waste management and new technologies.
“The Dairy Team also visited several dairies in the Reno area including a 550 cow Jersey dairy and a 1600 and 3700 cow Holstein dairy. During these visits, the team members had the opportunity to view the milking, dry lot, feeding, and waste management facilities. The team members also had the opportunity to engage in discussions and ask questions of the management/owners of each dairy to better understand the protocols and procedure used at each dairy. I think the team would agree it was a very educational and informative trip,” he concluded.
Mohamed El Tarouty chairman of the Egyptian Milk Producers Association, commented, “I just can’t tell how thankful we are to USSEC for making this conference trip come true – such an informative and educational gathering. Although some topics are quite advanced but still enlightening.
“The most recognizable thing about this trip is the great exposure we witness from all over the world, especially the United States, the core the dairy science development is driven from.
“It’s always amazing and encouraging to see how far they are pushing and enhancing the production sealing. Great talks and speakers addressing various aspects, managerial, environmental, nutrition, toxins, and even facial cow recognition. Besides meeting and sharing ideas with dairy farmers during the conference, and on their farms is always beneficial, actually one of the farms, which was state of the art.”
Maged Mady, CEO of Madyco Farms in Egypt, provided this feedback: “I am very grateful for such a useful, informative, and well-organized trip to join the 2019 Western Dairy Management Conference. We greatly appreciate all the effort made by the USSEC team. I am very thankful for your continuous care to keep our dairy business updated to the latest benchmarks for the best American farms. I learned about different indexes that will evaluate each job in our farm which allow me to focus with different perspective on the farm’s performance.
“Having the ability to talk with different farmers and even visiting their farm allowed us to change valuable data that stretched the bench marks for high PR%, milk production, and feed efficacy that will give us harder tasks to achieve in our farms. There is nothing wrong with the cows, but with our management, so we have tasks to do.”